How to Pick the Best DRaaS Provider

Geographic Diversity

Geographic diversity separates disaster from recovery.

Does this provider offer the range needed for a truly effective DRaaS solution? Most organizations want their DR solutions in a different location than their primary business, whether that means a different city or state. If a provider has range, a disaster that affects your business will not affect your backup solution.

Given that it's not a pressing, day-to-day need, disaster recovery (DR) is often ignored, avoided, rarely tested or postponed until severe weather or some other unforeseen disaster looms. Even then, the scope, cost and complexity of DR systems can be overwhelming. Some companies choose to risk it and have no plan in place. Others that have the resources might spend millions to build a secondary site for backup and recovery. There's an alternative to each of these options, though – an experienced service provider that can assist in DR planning and deployment by taking advantage of the cloud, offering disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), a cost-effective alternative to on-premise systems.

Many IT organizations have an established relationship with a channel partner, and, for DR, it's best to work with that partner to identify a service provider that can develop a profound understanding of the business before a disaster hits. This ensures an external DRaaS provider knows as much about existing IT infrastructure as the internal IT team and can best apply its expertise. DR is a keystone to business-continuity planning and any possibility of disaster means a business and its DraaS provider must be closely synchronized before, during and after any event.

So what should progressive enterprises look for in a provider? In this slideshow, Scott Youngs, CIO, Key Information Systems, has identified five tips to help you in your search.

Scott Youngs is the CIO at Key Information Systems and has been working in IT for more than 30 years. He heads the team that creates and implements new colocation, managed services and cloud offerings.

With today's modern solutions, enterprises should be able to transform backup and recovery from a low-level legacy IT function to a modern function delivering continuity and value to the entire business. ... More >>